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THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



PREACHED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



TROY, N. Y., NOV. 26, 1863. 



BY 



REV. MARVIN" R VINCENT, 

PASTOR. 



TROY, N. Y.: 

A. W. SCRIBNER, PRINTER, CANNON PLACE. 
1863. 



wx ifittoiaf 3Ki«hr line 



THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



preached in the 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 



TROY, N. Y., NOV. 26, 1863. 



REV. MARVIN R, VINCENT, 

PASTC*. 



TROY, N . Y . : 

A. W. SCRIBNER, PRINTER, CANNON PLACE. 

1863. 



*"o«ho 



Troy, November 27, 1863. 
Rev. M. R. Vincent, 

Dear Sir : 

The undersigned, members of your congregation, hav- 
ing listened with pleasure to the discourse delivered by you, on the 26th 
hist., and approving of the sentiments therein contained, request you to 
consent to its publication, and to furnish a copy for that purpose at your 
earliest convenience. The views so distinctly expressed on the great 
issues of the day, we thiuk, are calculated to do good, and the cause of 
Religion and Liberty demands its circulation. 

Respectfully yours, 

N. S. S. Beman, 
S. K. Stow, 
Giles B. Kellogg, 
David Cowee, 
F. S. Thayer, 
J. W. Freeman, 
James H. Howe, 
Charles P. Hartt, 
Martin I. Townsend, 
A. H. Graves, 
J. Sherry, 



R. D. Starkweather, 
Geo. Evans, 
E. J. Hicks, 
S. B. Saxton, 
Jonathan Edwards, 
Charles A. Holmes, 
Harvey J. King, 
N. Davenport, 
J. P. Albertson, 
Wm. F. Sage, 
E. S. Fuller. 



Troy, November 30th, 1863. 
Rev. N. S. S. Beman, D. D., S. K. Stow, David Cowee and others : 

Dear Brethren: — Your request for a copy of my Thanks- 
giving Discourse for publication is gratifying to me as an endorsement of 
the views therein presented. Fully convinced as I am of their important 
bearing upon the issues of the present, I shall rejoice with you, if their 
circulation shall contribute, in however small a degree, to the diffusion of 
correct Christian sentiment respecting the interests of our beloved land. 
I cheerfully comply, therefore, with your request, and forward you the 
manuscript herewith. 

Affectionately yours, 

MARVIN R. VINCENT. 



8EEMOK 



Job xxxti : 22. "Who teacheth like Him?" 
* 

Above every other man, the Christian minister 
is to " stand in the ways and see." While he is to 
be exempt from the dictation of public opinion as 
to the manner in which lie shall deal with evil, 
he is to find his most telling- texts and sermons in 
contemporary men and events. Religion, if it 
have no relation to such subjects, may be useful 
for angels, but not for men. 

The consideration of this fact cannot be omitted 
from our thoughts, on an occasion like this. Our 
Thanksgiving will be deep and heartfelt in pro- 
portion as it is understanding. A child, when 
informed that he is heir to a fortune, will be 
delighted because of the beautiful objects and the 
comforts which he sees it purchase for him. His 
gratitude is superficial. It will not be tempered 
with serious feelings by reason of the responsi- 
bilities which come with wealth. His mind cannot 
grasp the large benefits which will accrue to him ; 



G 

the means of mental training, social position, ex- 
tended culture, large beneficence. And if we 
shall sit down this day with our minds dwelling 
only on the more palpable and obvious motives 
for thanksgiving — our financial prosperity, our 
well filled barns, our freedom from disease, our 
extended business — this festival day will leave 
upon our minds and hearts no deeper impression 
than is left by any day in which we shake off the 
fetters of business, spread our tables abundantly, 
and make merry with our kindred and neighbors. 
Each merely palpable blessing is a gold rock, 
peering above the surface, valuable in itself, but 
chiefly valuable as it points to the mine beneath. 
Especially is this the case when the palpable 
grounds of thanksgiving are comparatively few in 
number; when, to a superficial, and particularly 
to a faithless observer, it would seem as though 
there were cause for mourning rather than for 
thanksgiving; and when men are found ignorant, 
as well as blasphemous enough to say, like the 
arch traitor of New York on a similar occasion, 
they see no cause for thanksgiving. All men will 
share this error more or less, according as they 
accustom themselves to look merely at the out- 
ward manifestations of Providence. Only as we 
shall make our thanksgiving unselfish, only as we 
shall consent to be lifted to a plane whence we 



may behold God's great system fulfilling its ap- 
pointed round, to see our joys and afflictions, 
not only as sources of pleasure or pain to us, but 
as the results of forces which must touch us in 
their revolution, and which have a mission far 
outside the sphere of our personal feelings ; — only 
as we shall have faith enough to see God working 
in shadow, and zeal enough to studv laws rather 
than results, shall we celebrate a true, Christian 
thanksgiving". 

We are not, it is true, to omit our thanks for 
these manifest tokens of Divine favor. For our 
abundant harvests, for our unexampled pros- 
perity amid the distractions of civil war, for our 
family blessings, for the goodness vouchsafed to 
our churches, for the spread of the gospel, for life, 
and health, and reason, for the ten thousand mer- 
cies which have concerned the various private in- 
terests of each family and of each individual, — for 
all these let the nation to-day send its triumphal 
Psalm up to the blue arches of Heaven, with full 
chorus of happy voices, and with the thunder of 
pealing organs — " Oh ! praise the Lord all ye na- 
tions : praise him all ye people ! for His merciful 
kindness is great toward us, and the truth of the 
Lord endureth forever." 

But after all, it is as a nation that we assemble 
to-day to praise that God by whom " kings reign 



and princes decree justice." Our thanksgiving is 
official/;/ called forth by national blessings. Themes 
contemplating more than mere individual interests 
may, therefore, appropriately occupy our minds, 
especially since it is to the nation, its weal or woe, 
its destiny, its management, that all our eyes 
turn to-day with the most absorbing interest. 

It is in view of these facts and principles that 
I call your attention this morning to the subject 
of national discipline ; not to offend prejudice, not 
to excite partisanship, not for the sake of idle 
declamation, but that, as Christians, praying for 
the coming of Christ's Kingdom, and recoo-nizin«- 
a Christian nationality as the end of all govern- 
mental experiments, we may be led to view the 
events of the hour in their true relations to the 
duty of thankfulness. And if our thoughts shall 
be occupied with the evolution of God's great 
plans, if we have been watching the sweep of 
the stream rather than the shape of the chips and 
fragments it carries with it, if we can stop at 
this point, and look back over a year, and see 
that the grand design has advanced a single inch 
toward its accomplishment, — that the east is more 
deeply tinged with the coming sun of a glorious 
fulfilment, then our thanksgiving will be worthy 
a Christian nation, and our courage for the future 
immeasurably strengthened. 



National Discipline, as I understand the term, 
embraces a direct and continuous supervision of 
God over the events of a nation's history, the 
shaping these events to a well defined and benefi- 
cent Divine purpose, and the training of men 
by his own appointed means for the accomplish- 
ment of that purpose 

It is not necessary to argue the fact of a gene- 
ral Divine supervision in national History. I 
have no discussion with that class of philosophers 
who deny it, or who evade a flat denial by the 
astounding paradox that the individual is con- 
trolled by Providence and society by law. We 
may leave them to reconcile for themselves the 
denial of Providential intervention, with the as- 
sumption of universal law, which is the highest 
human expression of providential working. But 
the second proposition involves a truth of great 
and universal interest. National Discipline, we 
have said, includes the shaping of the events of 
National histoiy to subserve a divine purpose; 
and an examination of History will, I think, re- 
veal a common law underlying all these develop- 
ments, viz : that each distinct form of nationality 
is guided in its growth so as to make it, sooner or 
later, the exponent of a great political, social, or 
moral idea. The various streams which go to 
make up the sum total of each distinct nationality, 



10 

empty into the same great basin. All national 
life is illustrative. With nations as with men, " no 
one liveth unto himself." In God's plan, nations 
exist with reference to principles : they are not 
merely positive, absolute developments of culture, 
or war, or political constitutions. When the page 
of a nation's history is complete, God writes at 
the head of it a grand, comprehensive truth as 
the condensed result of its social and political 
struggles, — its aggressions, its conquests, its de- 
feats, the forces that have influenced it, — and 
holds the text and sermon up to the inspection of 
the world. 

For illustrations of this truth (and its impor- 
tance justifies us in pausing to illustrate it,) we 
must go to the past rather than to the present. 
There we find both the processes and the results 
of national development crystallized, — fixed for 
our inspection. Regarding the field of history 
from a point so distant, we lose in accuracy of 
detail perhaps, but we gain in facility of general- 
izing. We take in at a glance that which prin- 
cipally concerns us, the movement of masses. 
We discover great currents if we do not see 
eddies. 

Let us consider briefl}^, both as most familiar and 
as most apposite, the three nationalities of Rome, 
Greece, and Judea . and nothing can be clearer 



11 

than the manifestation in each of these of a dis- 
tinct idea to which its national growth tended. 

The whole development of Rome culminated in 
the idea of organized power : Her very name was 
strength ; and as an exponent of this idea she takes 
her place in the Divine scheme, and in the system 
of the philosophic historian. Through all her ag- 
gressions and conquests and cruelties, we see this 
appearing as her representative thought. Wher- 
ever she went, she stamped it. Her legions never 
encamped for a night without building a fort ac- 
cording to the Lest known principles of the art, 
with its walls and gates and streets, constructed 
with mathematical precision. Her armies revealed 
the perfection of physical discipline. Social, do- 
mestic, individual life were merged in the life of 
the state. In the departments of law and forensic 
oratory alone can she lay claim to originality. 
The results of finer culture, — her Drama, her Po- 
etry, her Philosophy, were but feeble reproductions 
of the works of her Greek neighbor. Her lan- 
guage was rich in the terms of jurisprudence, and 
her pandects have entered into all later legislation. 
Her uniform policy with respect to a conquered 
territory or province, was to merge it in the sphere 
of her grand and compact organization, and by 
roads and highways and every physical appliance, 
to bind it to the great centre. She left this phys- 



12 

ical stamp, this mark of a strong external force, 
everywhere ; in improved administration, in se- 
vere discipline, in magnificent roads and forts 
and bridges and aqueducts. Her moral and in- 
tellectual impress was faint, as might have been 
expected from a nation which was content to 
give the world a second hand literature, and 
which yielded itself a ready prey to the luxurious 
corruptions of the East 

In Greece we discover an entirely different, 
indeed an opposite development ; — that of intel- 
lectual strength and cesthetic culture. Her people 
were less order-loving and law-abiding than their 
brothers across the Ionian, prone to try new 
experiments in government as well as in science, 
as adventurous in politics as in maritime enter- 
prise. The Greek mind was clear, subtle, logical, 
less reflective but more active than the Oriental, 
the perceptions quick, the aesthetic susceptibilities 
exquisitely fine, the imagination vivid, the tem- 
perament enthusiastic; and the whole breathed 
itself into a language which united the perfections 
of grace and strength, full of natural melody, 
capable of the subtlest shades of expression, alike 
flexible in the mazes of philosophic discussion, 
majestic in the " thunderous lilt " of the Epic, and 
tender, sparkling and full of passion, in the lighter 
measures of lyric song. The restless and enter- 



13 

prising disposition of the people awakened the 
spirit of colonization. They lined the shores of 
Asia with their towns, and had entrenched them- 
selves on the Italian peninsula ere the seven- 
hilled city had reached the zenith of its power. 
But where Rome crushed, Greece impressed. — 
Where Rome left only the marks of her strong and 
bloody gripe, Greece pervaded the intellect, and 
moulded the morals, and refined the tastes ; dart- 
ing the vivid rays of her thought into the golden 
mists of Asiatic speculation, and mellowing even 
the rude outlines of old Roman asceticism be- 
neath her subtle charm. 

In* Judea, again, we find a third nationality, 
differing radically from both the others, yet equally 
marked by one leading characteristic. Rome bore 
on her front the iron crown of power. Greece 
wore the chaplet of Intellect and Taste. Judea's 
brow was glorified by the halo of Religion. With- 
out the aggressive power, splendid organization 
and tenacious grasp of the first, without the artis- 
tic taste and literary culture of the second, she 
was a type of that which was to the others only 
a variable incident. Her whole national life and 
polity were religious. Her national and religious 
polities touched each other at every point. The 
fundamental idea of her nationality was a Divine 
call and a Divine segregation. Her leaders and 



14 

rulers were priests. The very watchmen on the 
temple walls, as they relieved each other's guard, 
broke the stillness of the night with psalms of 
praise to Jehovah. Her language, harsh and 
barren as the rocks of her own Sinai, unfit for 
philosophic discussion or for the manifold uses of 
general literature, conveyed the grand religious 
dogmas which lie at the basis of all religious 
belief and discussion, and their kindred themes, 
with a sublime simplicity and a glowing fervor 
which Homer and Sophocles never equalled. 
Alike with the Greek, the Jew, developed the 
spirit of enterprise which carried him eventually 
to every quarter of the known world, and, even 
before Christ, caused the worship of Abraham's 
God to ascend, alike from the borders of the Cas- 
pian, from the interior of Syria, and from the 
banks of the Nile. The national character and 
the national punishment which scattered the Jew- 
ish tribes, thus co-operated in diffusing the great 
idea of the worship of one, only, living and true 
God, so that the fnlness of time should find a soil 
ready prepared for the gospel of peace. 

In thus briefly reviewing the characteristics of 
these three nationalities, we have said enough to 
prove that the ends of their national development 
were distinct ; and a moment's consideration of 
their relations to a single event, will show a defi- 



If) 

nite Divine purpose in this fact. Each of these 
nations had a special purpose to subserve in bring- 
ing about the fulness of time. We can only sum 
it up briefly. The giant grasp and organizing 
power of Rome gathered, and held in a temporary 
political unity, the various distinct nationalities 
that were to be pervaded with the spirit of the 
gospel; and, by the roads which she built to bind 
these to the centre, paved a highway for its mes- 
sengers. As Rome furnished the material basis 
for the diffusion of the gospel, Greece provided 
an intellectual medium. She had not only carried 
her high culture and mental discipline into other 
lands, and brought them into contact alike with 
the Jew, the Roman, and the Asiatic, but in the 
city of the Ptolemies — Alexandria, where the pecu- 
liarities of Greek, Jewish, Roman, and Oriental life 
came into intimate contact, a theological lammao-e 
was formed, rich in all the phrases of the schools ; 
preeminently capable of that vivid word-painting 
demanded by the illustrative character of the gos- 
pel, and adequate to the subtlest distinctions and 
the nicest and most precise statement ; thus giv- 
ing the new faith a weapon for controversy as well 
as for evangelization. These, with the religious 
foundation laid by the spread of Judaism, the 
diffusion of those ideas which underlay no less its 
own system than the gospel, form a threefold 



16 

vindication of the wisdom of that God who sees 
from afar the fulfilment of promise, who makes 
even the wrath of man to praise him, causing the 
heathen to pave the roads along which rides He 
who hath on his vesture a name written, King of 
Kings and Lord of Lords, followed by the armies 
which are in Heaven. 

Other instances might easily be adduced ; these, 
which are more familiar, are sufficient to illustrate 
my position, that, in every national development, 
God has a distinct purpose to subserve, and de- 
signs to make it illustrative of a great idea. But 
here it may be said by one who begins to antici- 
pate my line of thought, that we are in no position 
to apply such a test to our own nation ; that we 
cannot determine what particular idea God has 
selected us to illustrate, because we are not far 
enough from the events, and cannot therefore 
generalize accurately. To some extent this may 
be true. We cannot of course speak with the in- 
spiration of prophets, nor can we come to a con- 
clusion as certain as in the cases already cited, 
where the processes and the results of national 
growth are fixed, defined, and open to our study. 
Nevertheless we can draw much more than a spec- 
ulative inference. We have the advantage of being 
able to start with this recognized principle, and to 
refer to it each successive fact as it reveals itself. 



17 

The nations whose rise and decay have furnished 
us this key to the locks of history, not only did not 
discern the direction of events, but never thought 
of looking for a general direction, save perhaps 
with reference to some temporary end. We, I re- 
peat, begin our investigations with the thought of 
God in History ; and mysterious as are the Di- 
vine workings at times, — though His ways and 
thoughts are not as ours, yet for the reverent and 
careful eye of Christian study, he traces the out- 
lines of His grand purposes so plainly as to leave 
little possibility of error. And morever we are, 
though comparatively in our national infancy, far 
enough from a vast crowd of events, to enable us 
to generalize and to draw a reasonable conclusion. 
Not only has the cloud lifted from our early na- 
tional struggles sufficiently for us to survey the 
field, but the events in the history of other nations, 
converging, for years previous, to the development 
of this new nationality, point with a directness 
and persistence which we cannot misunderstand. 

Whether, therefore, our nation is finally to ex- 
hibit in a concentrated form the best results of all 
former civilizations, and to be time's last, best gift 
to the world, or whether we are merely an inci- 
dent in the grand inarch of human progress, or 
whether we are merely to illustrate some single 
idea which in its turn is to subserve some great 
3 



18 

purpose far beyond our ken — this fact will scarce- 
ly admit of contradiction, that our national devel- 
opment has centred round the two great ideas of 
Liberty and Religion. 

But I have no desire to direct your thoughts to 
the ideas of liberty which have become the staple 
of popular thought and popular oratory, ideas 
which are no more common than they are superfi- 
cial and fallacious. We advance a verv short dis- 
tance toward the interpretation of the Divine deal- 
ings with us, when we talk of the " refuge for the 
oppressed of every clime," which is in itself a glar- 
ing falsehood : when we sing of the " Land of the 
free and the home of the brave," or when we laud 
the glories of that fearfully perverted term, Democ- 
racy. The important fact which claims our atten- 
tion is the joint development of these two ideas, 
Liberty and Religion. This, I assert, is the end 
toward which the leadings of Providence in our 
history have tended. This is the thought which 
God, by his own methods of discipline, is aiming 
to impress on this nation. 

I draw this inference in the first place from the 
foundations of our history. Run your eye for 
a moment over the leading nationalities of the 
world, and you find these principles, not always in 
unison, gradually taking shape among the other 
developments of their history, eventually, perhaps. 



19 

becoming controlling; forces in their civilization, 
one or b >th of them worked out from the tumult 
of war, and discussion, and revolution. In Eng- 
land, both these ideas were results before they be- 
came moving; forces. They grew up with English 
civilization, but did not for years form the distinct- 
ly recognized basis of its nationality. Its first 
ages were marked by the struggles of tribes and 
races for supremacy. Principles were not involv- 
ed in their conflicts. Rome, with her armed 
legions and majestic galleys, led by the first war- 
rior of the world, breaks in upon the quiet barbar- 
ism of Britain, lying passive and trembling beneath 
the gripe of Druidical superstition. Saxons, Danes, 
Normans, overrun it in turn, each leaving their im- 
press, in excess of liberty, or in the spirit of foreign 
aggression, or in the weakness and civil distrac- 
tions of feudalism. The struggles of tribes and 
races gradually gives place to the conflict of class- 
es, — king, barons, commons, clergy, each arrayed 
against the other ; yet in their very disputes set- 
ting in motion the discussion of social and reli- 
gious questions, and thus superseding by these 
"the blind and passionate animosity which had 
once separated the Norman and Saxon races," until 
in the reign of the third Edward, the influence of 
the commons in the constitution, now first assum- 
ing an appreciable weight, announced the growth 



20 

of popular liberty, arid the preaching of Wickliffe 
began the history of English Puritanism. In 
France, Liberty aimed to assert itself independent- 
ly of Religion, and in some instances indeed, to 
ignore religion. Italy and Holland struggled for 
freedom in opposition to religion, because religion 
and tyranny were in their cases identical. 

But in America we first see the numerous and 
varied experiences of the old world bearing new 
fruit in the foundation of a nationality on these 
two, jointly recognized principles. Hand in hand 
these sisters started from Delft Haven to fulfil the 
grandest dream of the Christian Philanthropist, to 
accomplish together the work which neither had 
ever completed separately ; and in the pent up 
cabin of that little vessel, on the rocking Atlantic, 
they cemented their covenant to the chant of the 
fetterless sea and untamed winds, fit choristers to 
sing the anthem of liberty. The interest which 
follows the Mayflower along her stormy track 
dwells not chiefly in those superficial thoughts to 
which schoolboy declamation directs us, — the pha- 
ses of personal sorrow, the severance of national 
and family ties, the hardships of the journey, the 
heroism of feeble women, the martyr spirit which 
preferred hardship and exile to home and mental 
bondage. All interests and individuals and incidents 
are merged in that scene in the Mayflower's cabin, 



21 

when the pilgrims, in the name of God, united 
themselves by solemn compact " into a body pol- 
itic for the glory of God, and for the advancement of 
the Christum faith. " This," as the historian well 
remarks, " was the birth of popular constitutional 
liberty. The middle age had been familiar with 
charters and constitutions ; but they had been 
merely compacts for immunities, partial enfran- 
chisements, patents of nobility, concessions of mu- 
nicipal privileges, or limitations of the sovereign 
power in favor of feudal institutions. In the cabin 
of the Mayflower humanity recovered its rights, 
and instituted government on the basis of equal 
laws for the general good."* Could the future 
have been unveiled to the tyrants of the old world, 
could they have read as God read it, and as we 
read it to-day, the significance of that little bark 
buffeting the waves, could they have known the 
freight which she carried, a mighty thought whose 
fruitage should turn to ashes in the mouths of des- 
pots, how quickly would they have sped on her 
track their swiftest - winged ships ; how would 
clouds of incense have arisen, and prayers have 
poured from the lips of cowled priests in all their 
statelv cathedrals, that the winds might be made 
messengers of their wrath, and the waves bury for- 
ever the germ of freedom. But no such fate was 

*Bancroft, Vol. I. 



22 

in store for her. Safe as the ark which bore above 
the wrecks of thrones and principalities the only 
remnant of an old race, and the only germ of the 
new, she swept the main. The child that trod her 
slip] ery decks, and clung to its mother's arm as it 
gazed in terror on the tumbling billows, might 
have dismissed its fear ; for a mightier than she 
who in fable led the Trojan to the seat of Roman 
Empire, even He who walked the stormy crests of 
Galilee, marked out the track of that ark of Liberty, 
and whispered to that devoted band " it is I, be 
not afraid." 

Time will not, of course, allow us to follow out 
in detail all the evidences pointing to this great 
fact. The whole course of American History 
from Plymouth rock tends to this inference. The 
idea of civil liberty was the central thought of 
all our national convulsions from that time on- 
ward, our representative thought in the eyes of 
other lands, the ever recurring source of their 
antagonism. The earthquakes which shook the 
infant state were ever throwing this granite sub- 
stratum to the surface. It cropped out in the 
resistance to taxation, in the spirit which tore 
from its pedestal the statue of England's sove- 
reign, in the burning wrath which strewed the 
road from Lexington to Concord with British 
dead, in the steady valor that sent British columns 



23 

torn and bleeding down the slopes of Charlestown, 
in the sturdy endurance which consecrated Valley 
Forge, and in the intelligent patriotism which cast 
off allegiance to human monarchies, and propound- 
ed to the world the charter of human equality. — 
It proved itself in 1812 the same as in '76, and 
thank God, it bids fair still to vindicate itself 
against the fearful odds ol civil rebellion, foreign 
menace, and secret treason. 

Side by side with this idea of civil liberty, 
wrought the idea of religion. It would be easv 
to point out the peculiar adaptation of American 
nationality to the spread of religious truth. Facts 
point strongly to America, as the banner-bearer 
of the nations in the work of Evangelization. 
The freedom of discussion, and the dissociation 
of Church and State, acting to exhibit religious 
truth in all its phases, to render conviction deep, 
and faith intelligent ; the elasticity of society, 
the comparative ease with which classes fuse, 
the absence of those strongly marked social dis- 
tinctions which characterize the old world, tending 
to bring men of all orders and creeds and charac- 
ters into contact; the admixture of foreign elements 
with our society, the attraction exerted not only 
upon the laboring poor, but upon much of the in- 
telligence of Europe ; the commercial enterprise 
which, in preparing highways for trade, opens 



24 

highways for the gospel, the marked individuality 
of the American character, demanding a field for 
independent development, and finding it in the 
vast, unsettled territory into which the pioneer 
pushes in advance of civilization, the vast system 
of public education, the language, rich in religious 
literature, and a vehicle at once strong and ample 
for the conve} r ance of religious truth, the natural 
assimilation of Christianity to free institutions, all 
these facts and others which might be named, 
point to religion as standing side by side with 
Liberty at the centre of our national develop- 
ment. 

The point, however, with which we are espe- 
cially concerned, is the joint action of these two 
ideas ; the legitimate effect of which would have 
been an approach, at least, to harmony between 
the principles of civil administration and of true 
religion. Nor is it necessary to follow them 
through every stage of our history, or to trace 
the progress of their divergence. It is enough for 
us to know, with sorrow, that they have diverged, 
and widely. If the highest exhibition of the 
union of these two forces be the end of our na- 
tional existence, then truly we have run boldly in 
the face of our destiny. Here we must drop 
theorizing, here we must leave historical parallels, 
and come down to the plain palpable facts of our 



25 

own generation. For years past, civil administra- 
tion, the expression of our national liberty, has 
been conducted in defiance of religion, and in 
opposition to its fundamental principles. Policy 
and party, not principle, have been the controlling 
forces in government, We have ignored the fact 
that, whoever be President, God is King. And 
Liberty, thus divorced from her natural ally 
which alone could show her the relations of obe- 
dience to freedom, which alone could harmonize 
the individualities she tended to develop, which 
alone could teach men to be rulers by teaching 
them to be submissive, exhibit the true majesty of 
the law, and purify the people from whom the law 
proceeds, — Liberty, I say, thus divorced, has run 
into wild and brutal license, which has brought 
us well nigh to the brink of anarchy. But what 
a spectacle have we presented before the world ! 
Oh ! if the Kino- of kings were to summon this 
nation before his bar this morning, and demand 
the usury of those two precious coins, bearing his 
image and superscription, which He committed to 
our keeping on Plymouth Rock, truly we should 
stand speechless at the sight of our pitiable inter- 
est. It was time, I ween, that some force should 
be applied to breach the walls of our nationality 
to their foundation, to show the corruptions which 
had found a hiding place in its vaults, and what 
4 



26 

fiendish malignity, and besotted ignorance were 
undermining it. The emergencies of history put 
representative men on trial. Men sit down at 
such times to scrutinize the causes underlying the 
emergency : and the acts of their leaders, which 
at the time were accepted without suspicion, in 
silence, or even with approbation, are brought 
under a searching examination which often makes 
the popular idol of yesterday the popular victim 
of to-day. When the Syracusans, on one occasion, 
desired to raise money for the prosecution of a 
war, they put up the statues of their heroes, and 
commanders, and legislators, at public sale ; and 
sentence of auction was passed upon each of them 
by a majority of votes, as upon so many criminals 
in court. Thus, in the light of our present emer- 
gencies, stand the men whom we ourselves, by the 
voice of the majority, have for years past, and 
particularly of late, placed at the helm of State. 
What is the verdict upon them to-day, passed by 
the quickened conscience of the nation ? How 
many will stand the test I Have the two great 
ideas of liberty and religion found expression in 
the lives and administration of our riders 1 Has 
the moral worth of a man entered at all into the 
consideration of his fitness for office 1 How long 
is it since a leading politician declared publicly 
that if the Devil were nominated as the candidate 



27 

of his party, he would support him 1 Is it not a 
notorious fact that, on three separate occasions, the 
Empire City of this union placed in its mayoral 
chair a man whom the law had branded as a thief 
and swindler? What crown shall we place on the 
brows of him who rewarded the confidence of the 
people which had honored him with its choicest 
gift, by administering the government in the inter- 
est of the southern aristocracy, and by comforting 
the arch traitor of Richmond with words like these : 

" Without discussing the question of right, 
of abstract power, to secede, / have never believed 
that actual disruption of the Union can occur without 
blood ; and if, through the madness of Northern Abo- 
litionists, that dire calamity must come, the fighting 
will not be along Mason and Dixon s line merely. 
It will be within our own borders, in our own 
streets, between the two classes of citizens 
to whom i have referred. those who defy 
law and scout constitutional obligations, will, 
if w t e ever reach the arbitrament of arms, find 
occupation enough at home." 

Yours truly, 

Franklin Pierce. 

Where shall we find a niche in the temple of 
infamy high enough to place the man who could 
sit in the Executive Chair, and hear the purpose 
of rebellion, and the menaces against national 



28 

strongholds, and the threats of usurpation openly 
bruited about ; who knew that a government for- 
tress was threatened with siege, yet would not lift 
a finger to relieve that beleaguered garrison, or to 
turn aside a cannon from its line of death 1 Have 
those days passed from your recollection when, 
because the law insisted on vindicating itself, and 
enforcing its enactinents, murder and plunder and 
arson ran rampant in the streets of our chief 
cities, and the Governor of this state, to whom 
had been confided the protection of our homes, 
our wives and little ones, met the incarnate de- 
mons with their hands red with the blood of 
those murdered negroes, and with bland smile and 
courtly gesture addressed them as " my friends ! " 
How long is it since a man on whom poured a 
blaze of the most damning evidence to prove him 
a traitor of blackest dye, a friend of rebellion, a 
bitter opponent of government in its efforts to 
suppress it, so mean a traitor that the very friends 
in whose interest he labored knew not what to do 
with him, was nominated for governor of one of 
the greatest States of the north ; and his sympa- 
thizing friends held a meeting of condolence for 
his arrest for treason in front of the Court House 
yonder ? Nor has it been safe to introduce ques- 
tions of morals into politics. Dismission and loss 
of caste have followed the ministers that dared 



29 

exhibit the relations of the gospel to political 
questions. Hooting- mobs have assaulted men 
who dared to condemn an established national 
institution, a system which touches the fundamen- 
tal principles of the gospel, a system of indis- 
criminate lust, and oppression, and cruelty, and 
murder of soul and body — as a crime and a 
disgrace. A southern ruffian has stricken down 
in his seat the man that called the nation to 
account for her sin, and has received for the 
cowardly act the ovations and plaudits of his con- 
stituents. The lobbies and galleries at Albany 
last winter, were packed with the very scum of 
our cities, armed with pistol and knife to silence 
the men who dared advocate reform and denounce 
corruption. We sicken at the recital. Are these 
the appropriate exhibitions of a Christian nation? 
Has religious sentiment pervaded our communities 
no more deeply than this I Does Religion teach 
patriotism I Does it teach humanity I Does it 
teach public faith and honor and honesty ? Does 
it teach hatred to treason, and zeal for the majesty 
of the law I Then, alas ! with all our stately 
churches, and thronging congregations, and elo- 
quent priests, religion has but partially done its 
work — the nation has turned from God and fol- 
lowed idols. 



30 

To bring these two ideas, religion and freedom, 
again into harmonious and united action, is the 
problem of our National Discipline. And here 
let me call attention to one important fact, that 
our great national convulsion grows out of a ques- 
tion, which perhaps above every other, brings 
these ideas jointly into its solution ; they must 
work together or fail. While I have no apology 
to make for introducing the subject of human 
slavery, I have no desire to enter into a tirade 
against its horrors, or to discuss it at all, farther 
than to bring out this thought. It is a fact which 
lies directly in the track of our discussion, and 
which must be dealt with, in order to establish the 
principles with which w T e set out. Nor indeed 
will it be necessary to dwell here at length. The 
relations of this fact to the question of liberty are 
obvious. Its relations to Christianity quite as 
obvious, one would think, though so persistently 
ignored by a large class. And all the political 
schemes which the freest government in the world 
ever devised, are powerless to touch the evil with- 
out the cooperation of moral force and Christian 
sentiment. Political philosophy in this encounter, 
is like Hercules in the battle with the Hydra. It 
may cut off the monster's heads, but it needs its 
ally, Religion, to sear the necks, and prevent two 
springing up in the place of one. We cannot 



31 

escape its moral aspect. Men who attempt its 
discussion from the standpoints of ethnology or 
political economy, come round inevitably into 
the realm of morals and religion. It is in an 
awakened moral perception that it intuitively rec- 
ognizes its deadliest foe ; and it is for this cause 
that it tries to wrest this weapon to its own use, 
and, by the most tortuous logic, the most ingenious 
pleading, and an affectation of the most expansive 
benevolence, seeks to pervert the gospel itself to 
a defence of its atrocities, and to hold up slavery 
as the great Missionary institution of the age. 
Not only so, but the institution appeals to motives 
which only a moral force can affect. It is the 
keystone of a great social arch, and cannot be 
removed without a displacement of all the other 
stones. It appeals to human pride and selfishness, 
and to the natural love of ease and indolence it 
has tended to foster. Human lust and human 
cupidity are alike interested in its maintenance. 
It comes into direct contact with those fundamental 
questions which are moral and not mental, which 
are not matters of opinion, but absolute facts, 
WTitten by God on the great heart of humanity, 
on which no man is privileged to have other than 
one opinion ; — the rights to person, to family, to life, 
to honestly acquired property, to choice of labor, 
to mental cultivation. It reaches lower still, if 



32 

possible, and the question it touches is still one of 
morals and religion ; the question whether, in the 
light of the gospel precepts, or even in the light 
of nature, man has a right to enslave the spirit 
and the mind as well as the body, and so to dwarf 
and cripple and blind them as to make them hug 
their chains, or at least be content in their bondage. 
Slavery is not the normal condition of men, and 
it is not natural for them to be either content or 
happy in Slavery ; and the argument so unblush- 
ingly advanced by its advocates, that the negro 
is happier and better in slavery than in freedom, 
comes back with fearful force upon its advocates, 
asking them who are responsible for this content- 
ment with the life and treatment of brutes, and 
what must have been the measure of the oppres- 
sion which has crushed out higher aspirations, and 
weakened the attachment to even the natural 
rights of men \ Which, while God's immutable law 
proclaims progress as the rule of humanity, limits 
its application, and condemns a race to stagnation 
as the means of filling its pockets and glutting 
its beastly appetites. We have tried the experi- 
ment of dealing with this question on purely 
political grounds, to our heart's content. We tried 
it by concessions, and compromises, and fugitive 
slave bills ; by allowing slaveholders to appoint 
our magistrates, and to dictate terms in our coum 



83 

cils, to dispose of our ships and to unman our 
arsenals; and at each new political compromise 
we smilingly said "all is well," until the guns of 
Sumter told us we must meet the issue fairly and 
on other and broader grounds. 

It now remains for us to look at some of the 
results of our present sore chastisement, and to 
see whether they furnish us just ground for 
thanksgiving. 

On the fact that the questions of the hour 
have, to a great extent, been raised above mere 
party issues, it will not be necessary to dwell at 
length. We see it and rejoice over it. The great, 
states of the Union have proclaimed their repen- 
tance in a thunder peal that lias sent dismay to 
the hearts of tyrants and schemers, and the word 
which laid the axe at the root of slavery's ac- 
cursed upas, has long ago sounded in the ears of 
the world. It may be said, indeed, that such a 
development as the last named, proves nothing as 
to the advance of moral sentiment ; that it was a, 
measure rendered necessary by military demands, 
and that its application was not universal. I an- 
swer, I am by no means claiming complete moral 
regeneration as a result of this discipline. It is 
enough for our purpose, knowing as we do that 
God works slowly, to be able to discern tenden- 
cies toward regeneration. If the President was 



34 

compelled to wait for a military necessity before he 
could issue the proclamation of freedom, I, for one, 
believe that he rejoiced at the necessity. But 
whether this were so or not, one thing is palpa- 
ble ; that the people were abreast with the gov- 
ernment on the expediency and propriety of this 
measure when it was issued, and now are far in 
advance of the popular sentiment of that hour : 
and to-day the great voice of the Nation sends 
back its loud Amen ! to the charter of the Afri- 
can's liberty. In studying the history of nations, 
as indeed in studying the acts of individuals, we 
cannot always pretend to read motives; but when 
a good, deed is done in the face of persistent 
opposition, when the sentiment of the people 
applauds it, when that sentiment grows daily 
deeper and deeper, and sees more and more 
reason to cherish the act, it is fair to assume 
that there is a healthful growth of moral senti- 
ment somewhere. If God has awakened men 
to a sense of their error by the chastisement 
of war and pecuniary loss, we have nothing to 
do with that. It corresponds with his action 
in other cases. The result is there, the word is 
spoken, the people not only acquiesce but rejoice, 
not only rejoice but act, and level party distinc- 
tions which seemed immovable, and tear up 
prejudices which appeared ineradicable, and stand 
on the broad platform of freedom for all men. 



And that men are heard and applauded who have 
in time past been hissed and stoned, and who 
argue this question on purely moral grounds, as 
they ever have done ; that sentiments once openly 
expressed and approved are now frowned upon, 
that, public opinion has forced men and organiza- 
tions which betrayed their great and holy trust 
of educating public opinion by refusing to lift up 
their voice on this subject — to fall into line under 
the banner of freedom, if these things indicate no 
clearer moral sense, if these things point only to 
a clearer apprehension of political policy, then 
history is no true criterion of moral progress. 

To the end of radical reformation, radical dis- 
closure of the evil was necessary. None could 
teach us this lesson like God, and fearfully has 
he taught it. For one, if there were no other 
cause of gratitude for this national upheaving, I 
should thank God profoundly for this. We knew 
there was party corruption before, but we did not 
know how deep it was, we did not know how 
thoroughly it had permeated every department of 
our administration and of our society, until we 
saw Presidents conniving at treason, and found the 
doors of the public treasury open and the guar- 
dian vanished with the contents. We knew that 
party spirit had run high, but we needed this war 
to teach us how many men would abandon their 



36 

country's dearest interests, and tie her hands in 
the hour of her need, for the sake of party. We 
knew there was sectional disaffection before ; we 
knew that there might be danger from the disaf- 
fected element ; but we did not know how deep 
was the disaffection or how imminent the danger, 
until the sound of rebel cannon disclosed to us a 
carefully matured and long contemplated scheme 
of public treason, bearing the mark of the beast 
upon its front ; and until the flood of discussion 
thus evoked, opened our eyes to the nature and 
tendencies of the system we had been petting 
and courting to keep it quiet. We knew there 
was individual wickedness and selfishness among 
us : but the war showed us. if we did not know it 
before, that men, while these tremendous issues of 
national safety, honor, existence, were hano-ino- in 
the balance, could yet take advantage of the na- 
tion's distress to fill their own pockets, and could 
enrich themselves at the expense of the very food 
and clothing of the country's defenders. We 
knew there was moral weakness and moral cow- 
ardice which loved peace better than right, and 
prosperity better than national honor ; but we 
knew it better, to our sorrow, when we heard men 
advocate continued concession and cowardly com- 
promise in the face of armed aggression. We 
knew that the material interests supported by 



37 

Southern patronage had tended to blind men to 
the evil of Slavery ; but we did not know how 
deeply it had corrupted even the free North, until 
we heard men plead for its interests and rights, 
and advocate new guarantees of its stability after 
it had clearly revealed itself as the root of all 
our troubles. We imagined perhaps that we were 
true patriots. We adored the idea of national 
destiny. God brought the question home to us 
on the two naked ideas of our national develop- 
ment, freedom and religion, and said to us, let us 
see how deep and sincere is your devotion ; and 
too many found out then the terrible mistake that 
they had erected an altar to an unknown God ; 
that they were worshipping a mere abstraction ; 
that theirs was a child's patriotism, finding its 
fitting expression in bonfires and banners and 
cannon ; and not the deep sentiment that appre- 
hended the issues at stake, and was willing to 
meet and fight them out like men, at any hazard, 
and on the broad ground of right. If the knowl- 
edge of the disease be half the cure, thanks be to 
God for the discipline that has shown us the disease. 
Another important and palpable result of this 
National discipline, has been the general acquain- 
tance it has necessitated with the fundamental is- 
sues at stake, the confirmation of unsettled opin- 
ions, and the formation of clearly defined opinions 
where none had previously existed. 



88 

The movement at the South was controlled by 
a few men, and these the capitalists and politi- 
cinns, a class comprising- nearly all the education, 
intelligence, and influence of their country. These 
men understood this question from its founda- 
tions. They saw it in all its relations. The great 
questions of climate, soil, race, the economical 
questions underlying their peculiar institution, 
its tendencies, its necessities, they fully compre- 
prehended. They knew that extension was a 
necessity of their existence ; that power was 
necessary to extension ; that moniecl aristocracy 
was necessary to power, and that Slavery was 
necessary to monied aristocracy. On their great 
movement they staked everything. They knew 
that failure meant extinction. The poor whites* 
the ignorant masses, who made up so large a 
portion of their armies, were not acquainted with 
these profound questions. The aristocratic ele- 
ment of southern society was able to influence 
them with a few eloquent and ingenious false- 
hoods, and to force them, if need were, into co- 
operation. Their power was centralized, their 
discipline inhumanly severe, their control perfect, 
and they entered upon the conflict after years of 
preparation. The moving power of the North, on 
the other hand, was diffused throughout the masses. 
Absorbed in its material progress, it had given less 



39 

time to the study of social problems, and hence 
did not, like the South, at once see how deep- 
seated were the issues of the conflict. The 
movement of the North, was the movement of 
the people ; that of the South, the movement of 
a compact body of leaders. At the North, the 
principles involved had not only to be diffused 
over a large area, but absorbed, before the 
movement assumed a vastness and force adequate 
to the occasion. The great proportion of the 
men who fought her battles and furnished her 
resources, were not machines, but thinkers ; and 
both would know why they fought and why they 
spent : and so the outbreak of the rebellion found 
the South like a lithe and sinewy athlete, with an 
eye that had counted the cost, and measured its 
adversary, with every limb trained, and a deter- 
mination to conquer or die. It found the North 
like a giant half asleep, or bent on other business, 
lazily confident in his strength, rejoicing in his 
prosperity, eating, drinking, and making merry, 
and so little conscious of the power, and will, and 
dire hate of his enemy, as to think he could crush 
him with one hand, while he carried his cup to his 
lips with the other. This fact is enough of itself 
to account for the apathy with which we entered 
upon the contest. The first blow struck by the 
South was charged with the concentrated malice 



40 

and venom of half a century ; was struck deliber- 
ately and followed up vigorously. Our first return 
blow was the passionate, ill-aimed stroke of a man 
suddenly assaulted, and startled into self defence. 
And this fact, too, points to the deeper purpose of 
Providence, in the strange succession of defeats 
and disasters which so startled us from our self- 
security and conceit, The delay was needed for 
this process of absorption. God meant to put a 
moral power behind this movement, a deep, intel- 
ligent conviction of its import, which should 
propel it with the resistless sweep of an Alpine 
avalanche, gathering momentum at every bound, 
and should carry it on to the complete extinction 
of slave tyranny. Delay was needed to produce 
conviction. The North would not move without 
conviction, and it came slowly. Slowly the true 
issues of the contest sank into the Northern mind ; 
slowly the depth of Southern hate, and the inten- 
sity of Southern purpose, and the radicalness of 
Southern treason, and the horrible nature of 
Southern designs, dawned upon the Northern 
mind. Each defeat, each vessel burned by Anglo 
Rebel pirates, each Union man murdered or im- 
prisoned for his principles, was a spark gathering 
itself into the bosom of a cloud of wrath, which 
is already gathering blackness, and settling porten- 
tously down on the mountains of the South, soon 



41 

to discharge its volleyed lightnings upon the 
hordes of treason. May God send its blasting, 
riving fires into the very heart of Rebellion ; and 
if defeat and delay have brought our soldiers to 
fight, and our capitalists to pay, and parents, and 
husbands, and wives to sacrifice their dearest 
interests from a patriotism which is a principle, the 
outgrowth of understanding conviction, then thank 
God for defeat and delay. 

But farther, this discipline has brought men to 
the distinct assertion of their political principles, 
and to examine whether they had any principles 
or not. The great thought of the age has gone 
through the land as with a lighted torch, peering 
into every corner; and it has been in vain for men 
to call for rocks and mountains to cover them. 
Men who regarded a political opinion as a piece 
of family plate, bequeathed from their fathers, and 
to be hoarded and cherished untouched, have been 
compelled reluctantly to open the sanctuary, and 
brush away the cobwebs, and see how the opinion 
met the requirements and stood the test of new 
issues. A voice has gone up and down crying 
" choose ye this day whom ye will serve." The tests 
of the hour have put doubtful, halting men — men 
who shifted with the popular tide, and bowed low 
to God one day, and equally low to the Devil the 
next. — who were, in the worst possible sense, 'all 
6 



42 

things to all men,' into a position where they must 
commit themselves to one set of principles or to 
the other. Hitherto, they conlcl run back into a 
forest of party lines, and casuistical distinctions, 
and half defined principles, and by skilful evasion 
and compromise, manage to preserve a respectable 
character for consistency. A more dangerous 
class, in church or state, does not exist; and I am 
thankful that the fiery discipline of the present 
has consumed their refuge of lies, and has 
brought the issues of the day down to an alter- 
native from which there is no escape — loyalty or 
disloyalty. 

Nor have we been wanting in that class of 
men who have no settled political opinions, and 
who do not care to have any. They want only 
to be " let alone." They are not interested in 
politics ; they dislike their adjuncts. They know 
little or nothing of party issues or of national 
questions ; or, if their opinions are ever so strong, 
and their acquaintance with the progress of af- 
fairs ever so intimate, they are absorbed in busi- 
ness or books, and are quite willing that any 
party shall rule that will not interfere with their 
interests. That the number of these has been 
large, may be partially inferred from the char- 
acter of the hands into which political machinery 
has passed. For men of this class to say that 



43 

politics have fallen into such hands that they are 
disgusted, is not a fair statement of the case. 
There are more intelligent, and able, and virtuous 
men in the country than there ever were ; and it 
is because such men have suffered themselves to 
grow lukewarm ; have refused to accept of public 
office because of its dreary routine ; have refused 
to work in the political arena, because they had 
to work in disagreeable company ; — because of 
these things, our public offices reek with corrup- 
tion, and mobocrats and villains administer our 
laws. There is less excuse for the existence of 
this class among- us than elsewhere. Here no 
man is excusable for keeping out of the sphere 
of politics, for every man is a governor. The 
government and its administration are each man's 
personal business, and he has no right to let any- 
thing, so absorb him as to leave him no time to 
devote to his country. Her institutions are to be 
his study, her government his care, her interests 
his own. God has taught this class of men a 
lesson — a lesson which it is to be hoped they will 
remember. This war, touching as it has every 
material interest of the country, has compelled 
more men to study national issues, to form opin- 
ions on national questions, and to interest them- 
selves personally in national movements, than 
any force that lias ever operated in our history. 



44 

They have awaked to find, not only their public 
institutions, but their homes, their personal safety 
menaced. They have awaked to the fact that, 
while they have been occupied with their money- 
bags and their safes, giving splendid entertain- 
ments, or meditating in costly libraries, a power 
has been growing, to whose suppression their 
wealth and influence should have been applied in 
its infancy, but which has grown to proportions 
which enable it to give fearful battle, and which 
even make its subjugation a doubtful question. 
For this infusion of mental stamina; for this clear 
definition of political issues and political parties, 
enabling us to see who are our friends and who 
are our enemies ; for this discipline, that has not 
only sifted, but created opinion — we thank God. 

These are some of the lessons of our National 
Discipline. Their number is by no means ex- 
hausted, and we must pause upon the very thresh- 
old. If this discipline shall have wrought to 
make us purer and better, to develop us into a 
self-reliant, dignified, national manhood, willing 
to learn of other nations, but careless of their 
opinion when our own rights and duty are con- 
cerned, not unduly exalted by success, nor unduly 
depressed by reverse, if it shall have tended to 
point out our national faults and their remedy, to 
rill our citizens with a new sense of responsibilitv, 



45 

to base patriotism on conviction and principle, to 
fit the nation to govern itself, if it shall have 
purged the land from the great blot that defaced 
it, if it shall have given us higher and clearer 
ideas of national morality, if it shall have given 
shape to our heretofore vague ideas of national 
destiny, and arranged them round the two great 
thoughts of Liberty and Religion, then thank God 
for the Discipline. Though the rod be applied 
severely, let us kiss the hand that smites. Though 
the cup be bitter, let us bless Him that puts it to 
our lips. These results, as I have already said, 
are not fully accomplished ; but we discover ten- 
dencies toward them all in the developments of 
the present struggle, and if severer chastisement 
will bring them out more definitely, and make 
their influence felt more deeply, in God's name 
let the blow mil. We may expect farther chastise- 
ment, not only as a punishment, but as a develop- 
ing force. The evils we combat, have been grow- 
ing for eighty years, and are not going to disap- 
pear at our word. They will die hard, and it is 
well ; for God is testing our worthiness to enjoy 
the boon of liberty, by asking how much we love 
it, how hard we are willing to fight for it, how 
much we are willing to sacrifice for it: and if we 
shall do this work like men, if we shall fall in 
with God's manifest design to purge our national 



4G 

floor thoroughly, to tear up the evil by the roots, 
if we shall finally succeed in accomplishing our 
end, in burying- slavery forever, and getting 
national corruption under our feet, a shout of 
praise will go up from this people such as will 
rend the very Heavens. It shall rise from the 
granite hills of New England, mingled witli the 
click of her busy looms, and the hum of her spin- 
dles; the valleys and rolling pastures of New 
York, standing thick with corn, shall be vocal with 
the acclamations of her sons ; it shall roll upward 
from the deep bosom of Pennsylvania, and echo 
through the galleries of her iron and coal caverns ; 
and the West shall catch the song on the spark- 
ling peaks of its grand rampart, and send it back 
with an echo that shall tremble in every prairie 
flower. Aye, and the South, fair land of the sun, 
so long cursed with bondage, and reaping to-day 
over all its desolated plains the fruit of its dire 
sin, shall not be voiceless. Her freed bondmen 
shall make the air pulsate with their uncouth 
psalm of triumph, grand as the song which swept 
from Miriam's timbrel over the waves of the Red 
Sea ; and her own sons, awakened by their bitter 
experience to the character of the tyranny that 
has held them, no less than the African, in bondage, 
and has striven to mount to empire on their necks, 
shall unite their unskilled voices in the general 



47 

anthem, singing with ever bolder emphasis, until 
the palmetto groves, and the still lagoons, and the 
snowy fields of cotton, now no longer King, shall 
be stirred with the voice of thanksgiving. Aye ! 
methinks, when that day shall dawn, the nation's 
shout might almost penetrate farther. Methinks 
it might steal into the ears of those fallen heroes 
who sleep on hillsides far away, and by whose 
graves sorrowing hearts shall give thanks with 
sobs. Methinks it might reach them as they lie 
in their cold beds at Antietain, and Chancellorville, 
at Donelson and Vicksburgh, at Fredericksburgh, 
and Chattanooga, and Bull Run, and stir their 
silent dust with a throb of thanksgiving — of 
thanksgiving, not that peace has been restored ; 
not that husbands, and sons, and fathers shall go 
forth to battle no more ; not that trade is revived 
and commerce safe ; but that God has led the 
nation through the vale of tears, through the ter- 
rible baptism of blood and fire, to a nobler and 
purer national life. 



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